Not Moldova 1937

Overview

"In another virtuoso turn, the artist brings her exemplary camera eye to Moldova, home of her grandparents, before they were driven out along with their Jewish comrades, thousands of them killed. Fragments of survivor testimonials mix with archival photographs and objects, along with present-day city celebrations (what is being forgotten in these civic rites of memory?). Haunted natural scapes grow over the dead, the abandoned graveyards and stones mark the places where culture and community used to be performed. This is a synoptic act of grieving, but also: a summoning of the present, a conjuring of the thousand ways that the betrayals of neighbours and friends marked out the Jews who had lived peaceably amongst them for generations, newly caught now in a terror of state oppression and greed."- Mike Hoolboom